Sunday, August 29, 2010

Fighting Obamacare in Ohio

The following is a guest post while DJ Tablesauce is away due to his wedding.

If not repealed, Obamacare will be a disaster for our economy and our health care system, and will surely push our current budget-busting deficits even higher. One of the most offensive parts of the bill, though, is the mandate that every American must purchase health insurance. Never before has Congress dared to require Americans to purchase a product.

Some states are fighting back, and several Attorneys General have already filed lawsuits against the law for its unconstitutional mandate. But not here in Ohio. Richard Cordray is a Democrat, and refuses to do so. That's where Ohio citizens have picked up the ball.

Meet The Ohio Project. It is a true grassroots effort to get an amendment to the Ohio Constitution on the ballot for voters to decide on. The amendment would basically say that no Ohioan can be forced to buy health insurance, nor be penalized if they don't.

Getting an amendment on the ballot is no small task. You need hard signatures from 10% of the voters. That's around 450,000 signatures. It's too late to get this on this year's ballot, but we can still get it on the ballot in November 2011. A lot of signatures have been collected, but tens of thousands more are still needed. Most folks are happy to sign. They just aren't aware of the campaign. The problem is that the group has no money. It is literally a true grassroots citizens movement of all volunteers. And they're still looking for more Ohioans to collect and turn in signatures.

Recently in Missouri, a similar ballot measure passed by a huge margin. When given their own chance to make a choice, voters reject Obamacare. With a little more time and help, Ohio voters will get their chance next year, too.

5 comments:

This is perhaps the only time thus far I've disagreed with this blog. No offense to the generous contributors who stand in while Keeling gets married, but this is a preposterously abhorrent idea and the completely wrong approach to the issue.

The first issue is whether the health care mandate is a legitimate use of federal authority (specifically, the federal tax penalty to those who lack health care) - to this I would say probably not. On this, most readers amenable to this blog would likely agree. If this is generally accepted (which I will assume), it poses the important question of method by which to challenge it: through the courts (the traditional course of action since Marbury v. Madison), or through this silly amendment.

To put this in historical context, 1851 (the name of the drafting society) was the start of a heady antebellum period debate between the southern and northern states about a state's power to nullify federal law in general, and slavery in particular. Nullification in particular, and not slavery, is the basis of secession for the states that would form the CSA. While there was no constitutional provision explicitly rejecting nullification (aside from Articles I, IV), it could be deduced from the act of secession itself that state autonomy (because really this is what it comes down to) is impossible under the Constitution. Second, from the fact that the Union won, the international custom (at the time) that he who wins, rules, nullification and secession were big no-nos (as an aside - any good conservative society should fall between 1865 and the FDR takeover of the Supreme Court, with Brown v BoE as a big exception).

The article is right that most folks are happy to sign, but they don't know about the campaign. The syntactical problem with this is that people will gladly sign even if they are aware of but not knowing of the campaign. I contest that even the those aware of the campaign are ignorant of the ramifications its success would bring.

Since this is an issue of States rights, and the desire to prevent federal creativity in exercising power over the states, I would instead argue that the better course of constitutional change would be to repeal the 17th amendment, which is easily the biggest usurpation of state power (the direct election of senators, the legislative body constitutionally reserved for representatives of the states and not of the states' citizens), and a much better (legal, constitutional, and conservative) course of action in resurrecting the states' interests in the federal government.

This is perhaps the only time thus far I've disagreed with this blog. No offense to the generous contributors who stand in while Keeling gets married, but this is a preposterously abhorrent idea and the completely wrong approach to the issue.

The first issue is whether the health care mandate is a legitimate use of federal authority (specifically, the federal tax penalty to those who lack health care) - to this I would say probably not. On this, most readers amenable to this blog would likely agree. If this is generally accepted (which I will assume), it poses the important question of method by which to challenge it: through the courts (the traditional course of action since Marbury v. Madison), or through this silly amendment.

To put this in historical context, 1851 (the name of the drafting society) was the start of a heady antebellum period debate between the southern and northern states about a state's power to nullify federal law in general, and slavery in particular. Nullification in particular, and not slavery, is the basis of secession for the states that would form the CSA. While there was no constitutional provision explicitly rejecting nullification (aside from Articles I, IV), it could be deduced from the act of secession itself that state autonomy (because really this is what it comes down to) is impossible under the Constitution. Second, from the fact that the Union won, the international custom (at the time) that he who wins, rules, nullification and secession were big no-nos (as an aside - any good conservative society should fall between 1865 and the FDR takeover of the Supreme Court, with Brown v BoE as a big exception).

The article is right that most folks are happy to sign, but they don't know about the campaign. The syntactical problem with this is that people will gladly sign even if they are aware of but not knowing of the campaign. I contest that even the those aware of the campaign are ignorant of the ramifications its success would bring.

Since this is an issue of States' rights, I would instead argue that the better course of action would be to repeal the 17th amendment (the direct election of senators, the legislative body constitutionally reserved for representatives of the states and not of the states' citizens) - easily the biggest usurpation of state power, and a much better path of constitutional change in resurrecting state's interests in the federal government.

This is perhaps the only time thus far I've disagreed with this blog. No offense to the author, but this is a preposterously abhorrent idea and the completely wrong approach to the issue.

The first issue is whether the health care mandate is a legitimate use of federal authority (specifically, the federal tax penalty to those who lack health care) - to this I would say probably not. But challenge this through the courts, not this half-baked veil of secessionist nonsense.

To put this in historical context, 1851 (the name of the drafting society) was the start of a heady antebellum period debate between the southern and northern states about a state's power to nullify federal law in general, and slavery in particular. Nullification in particular, and not slavery, is the basis of secession for the states that would form the CSA. While there was no constitutional provision explicitly rejecting nullification (aside from Articles I, IV), it could be deduced from the act of secession itself that state autonomy (because really this is what it comes down to) is impossible under the Constitution. Second, from the fact that the Union won, the international custom (at the time) that he who wins, rules, nullification and secession were big no-nos (as an aside - any good conservative society should fall between 1865 and the FDR takeover of the Supreme Court, with Brown v BoE as a big exception).

The article is right that most folks are happy to sign, but they don't know about the campaign. The syntactical problem with this is that people will gladly sign even if they are aware of but not knowing of the campaign. I contest that even the those aware of the campaign are ignorant of the ramifications its success would bring.

Since this is an issue of States' rights, I would instead argue that the better course of action would be to repeal the 17th amendment (the direct election of senators, the legislative body constitutionally reserved for representatives of the states and not of the states' citizens) - easily the biggest usurpation of state power, and a much better path of constitutional change in resurrecting state's interests in the federal government.

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Third Base Politics is an Ohio-centric conservative blog that has been featured at Hot Air, National Review, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Michelle Malkin, and Ace of Spades, among others.